Page 21 of The Dark Before Light

My first thought is of my wife, but I shut it down before I even picture her face. My mind goes blank.

“This is impossible,” I mutter.

“Did you have a pet as a child?”

I immediately envision the ugliest dog in the world. A small, geriatric mutt with the foulest breath who followed me home from the river one day and inserted himself into our family. But he loved me first and most, rarely straying from my side.

“Aye. Dilly.” A genuine smile spreads on my face. I fucking loved that dog.

“Good. Hold onto that feeling as you take an internal step back from it. Think of it as a ball of light that you can walk around and observe. Now take one more step back until you can feel where that happiness is. Where it lives in your body. Once you find it, tell me.”

It’s surprisingly easy to follow her instructions.

“My shoulders,” I say softly. “The front side of them. And, ehm, the bottom of my chest around my ribs.”

I feel like an absolute fool, but she says, “Good,” with a warmth in her voice I haven’t heard before. “Take a deep breath and open your eyes.”

I open my eyes to her smile and that annoyingly charming eyetooth.

“Now,” she says lightly, “how was returning to work?”

My lips tug into a begrudging smile. “You win, Doc.”

Once I start talking, it’s like a dam breaks. More and more pours out, and at some point I forget that she’s… her. I talk to her like I would a colleague, outlining a few of the more exciting ventures in the works. Advancements and new applications for current technologies, all the expected impacts on the market over the next few years.

Stirling listens with her whole body. Legs crossed, she leans forward with an elbow on a knee and her chin on a fist. Her eyes stay pinned to mine, slightly widened. She looks like I’m giving her proof that fairies are real. It’s a heady feeling and likely to blame for what comes out of my mouth next.

I tell her what I’ve been personally working on for the last five years with a specialized team of ethicists, neuroscientists, nanotechnologists, and biomedical and robotics engineers. Information so privileged even Alistair doesn’t know all the details. Beyond the initial press release years ago—that I’d argued vehemently against—we’ve kept the project behind literal vault doors.

“Neural nanorobotics,” she echoes in an awed tone. “I vaguely remember there being a media splash years ago when Lumitech announced funding research on it, but I haven’t seen anything since.”

“That’s intentional.”

After the first round of death threats, I’d put my foot down with the board. Given that some of the threats weren’t specific to me but rather promises to bomb our headquarters, I hadn’t needed to push too hard.

She frowns. “There were protests for a while, right?”

I nod. “People hear ‘artificially intelligent robots’ and ‘brain,’ and assume nefarious intent. Then fear-mongers spread more misinformation that, unfortunately, is far more palatable to the masses than scientific research.”

“I can’t remember if you released the intended application. Is there one?”

I smile wryly. “We’re not developing mind-control, that’s for sure. Our goal is nanorobots that repair damaged neurons and remove amyloid plaques associated with Alzheimer’s disease.”

Stirling blinks and sits back, a softness in her expression that makes my skin itch and my fingers twitch. My tongue swells with another detail—how close we are to a working prototype. But I’ve already said too much.

“That’s amazing,” she says. “I’m assuming you haven’t publicized your ongoing research because of competition?”

“We have no competitors,” I tell her with a small smile. It’s not arrogance—it’s fact. No one has the team I do. Other companies are working on similar technologies, but they’re light years behind us. “It’s for security reasons.”

She nods. “What you’ve told me won’t leave this room.”

“I’m not worried about that.” Oddly, it’s true.

“Then what are you worried about?”

My mind ices over, the spreading numbness a welcome buffer between me and this new, mystifying urge to confide in her. I shouldn’t have told her about the project to begin with.

There is no project. Not anymore.

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